That Silver Blaze of Yours
by Be3
Summary: When Gollms said that we shall investigate the disappearence of the mearas from King Theoden's pastures, I smelt trouble. And trouble in Middle-Earth has a name and a face...
1. Chapter 1

I am often rebuked, by my less-than-better part, for telling my tales backwards. That, or starting in the middle and never coming to the beginning. It is not a failure I now regret, rather a blessing: as I met Mr. Gollms due to a gruesome murder (or two), I much prefer to relate our subsequent feats without remembering the dawn of our inseparable collaboration.

By the way, the couple of murders I mentioned deserve a novel of their own. Ohh! I would expose many a person of import (it's a shame that most are already safely exported back) guilty of (at the very least) high-handedness with respect to my Ring. Alas, Gollms had been known to lose It before. He will not have a living reminder of his early failure, even though in the end he managed to return It to Its rightful owner. Me.

That is, us.

However, this is another story entirely. This one started quite pleasantly, with a breakfast, at which Gollms, in his usual abrupt manner, informed me that he ought to 'go'.

It does seem improbable for him to retire from me for any amount of time. We share a body, to our mutual disgust. The cost of it sets my hair on end. I am afraid, though, that, tenacious scoundrel that he is, he'll find a way to divorce our personalities someday, and leave me without.

Not then; he meant _we_'d have to visit Rohan for a change. And for the sake of King Theoden's curse - er, horse. _The_ horse. I smelt trouble.

Actually, anyone with a passing knowledge of Shadowfax (passing, ha, ha!) and a brain would smell it and run away screaming. Sometimes, I think it is this dividing of a brain, and not a big one to boot, that gets us into all this, pardon me, adventure. (Gollms has the gall to assume the superior intellect for himself!)

Anyway, the talk of all Middle-earth had apparently disappeared for good several days before. (And I myself was perfectly happy with it gone.) Even with our extraordinary olfactory senses the trail had to be cold...

I surveyed our lair. To Valars with it all! The only choice was either to pick all the papers and, um, _things_ that an unbridled (or dispeptic) Gollms accumulates in a flash, or to go along for the ride and hope he wouldn't dive into the Fires in his quest for the answer.

'And go we shall,' I concluded dully.

'We must run, then!'

(As I said. Only normal folks run _away_ from the horse. Even the Nazgil did.)

'...You will oblige me by taking My Preciousss.'

He maintains that It helps him speculate, and wonder of wonders, It does. I have long lost count of times when we had to save ourselves by the skin of our teeth, though, because speculating is not so safe as it used to be.

Meanwhile, 'We are going well,' grumbled he, scowling at the Yellow Face. 'Our rate at present is three leagues an hour.'

'I - haven't - observed - the - landmarks,' panted I. Navigation is not my forte.

'Idiot - '

Well, to make it short, we finally, and mostly due to our abovementioned ability (to sniff), chanced upon the way to Theoden's stables, where Silver Blaze (Shadowfax's common name, though not at _that_ moment, ha, ha!) had resided. During the journey we reviewed the few facts that could be treated as such. (As facts, not as few.)

On Tuesday evening Gollms received magpiegrams from both King Theoden _and_ Inspector Gamgee, which in itself explained why he hadn't bothered with investigating the case until Thursday morning. On the other hand, how can you misplace a _mearas_ for long? We took it for granted that the animal would be found immediately!

(I was a bit surprised and, I confess, touched to learn that it was Aragorn's arrest that moved my fellow to action. We have nothing to thank the Man for, and yet Gollms dug ourselves out to support him in his hour of need.

'Nay, it is Theoden that I wish to spite today. Besides, I have a different suspect in mind.'

So much for his better nature.)

Theoden feathered his nest three fingers high using Shadowfax as a race horse (or was it vice versa? I mean, the beast cut a flash before all the mares of the Mark, so perhaps it was the user); there are Men, Dwarves, Elves, and even a certain Tom Bombadil who would invent Greenpeace in order to stop this rip-off. What insight permitted Gollms to so narrow down his list of possible perpetrators?..

Ah. Yes, of course.

There was also the small matter of Grima Wormtongue's death. A sworn bachelor rumoured to have a most unfortunate crush on Theoden's own niece, he was perhaps older than reasonable for a warden of a _mearas_. Then again, who isn't. They say the Man to tame this beast is not yet born; Shadowfax clearly implied (and imprinted, ha, ha!) on numerous occasions that he would never be.

The king had to tweak some rules for a jockeyless mount to enter the competition. His most convincing argument was that it really made no difference, except to reduce health hazard.

Wormtongue had no children, kept a number of handmaidens, and was comfortably off, to put it mildly. As to the source of his riches, fingers point to the nearest landlord, Mage Saruman, since one cannot exactly accuse his legitimate lord of being a spendthrift.

A blackmailer could live off Saruman for an Age or two, but Gollms insists that he is not to blame in this case. I can sympathize - we, too, were denied a place in the Hall after our death and sent back to Middle-Earth. (It is the Powers' favourite strategy, first tried on one of their own. Experience isn't worth dung when you have already done everything you were made to do, so you can sit back... and unwind.) The poor chap then tried every door, even our lair, but nobody will take him in until he settles a little account with Ents.

And seeing as the Ents are still deciding just what they want from him, and the list includes, ha, ha, Entwifes... and bearing in mind the Shire lawsuits... Saruman so far is quiet as a lamb.

There is one person, _only one_ now that the hateful Bagginses have departed into the Blessed Realm (and by doing so, reversed the balance, ha, ha!) who has the motive, the means, and the gall to steal the Riderless Horse.

Officially, he went away together with those two pests.

Unofficially...

Trolls once introduced a special word for trouble. It remains, o wonder of wonders, a household word, a word Men and Elves and Hobbits and Wargs and Gnomes... we all use in times of distress and darkness.

The word is - _Gandalf_.


	2. Chapter 2

I have found it convenient to keep records of our misfortunes. You are reading, my good Sir (or Lady, I'm not finicky about these things), an adaptation of one, and therein lies a problem.

Gollms and I are amazing at adapting when we have a common Goal. When there isn't one, we flip a coin – a quirk we'd picked when prisoners in the Greenwood. Folk there do it all the time, and madder still, they 'discuss' their 'results'!

_Elves_. There's just no hope for them.

(And my side appeared only 1891 time in 3789 cases! How is that fair?)

We flipped one now, and I lost. Again.

Now, Gollms and I have very different notions of what we want our story to run like (as usual), and he insisted that the Incident on the Road be included. Remember, it is his whim, and not mine.

(Technically, it happened in the Wild, and the nearest road was, like, leagues to the right, but such trifles don't register in the world-view of my worse half.)

The Yellow Face was grilling us. Bees buzzed busily in bushes. Not a wisp of breeze touched our brow. In short, the conditions were abominable and conducive to mistakes.

Half-starved, we stumbled across the Staff of Wizard Radagast.

_Very_ rude.

To our credit, it looked like the handle of a shovel. There was the blade and all. Fortunately, we aren't high. We didn't end up nose-to-leather-boot.

'Hello, fellow lost one, well met!'

(Gollms had been experimenting with alliteration again. His language plummets to 'corny' when we blunder into Chaldeans; but that is nothing against what Hobbits rile him up to, ha, ha.)

'Hello down there,' the Wise One replied with equanimity, and thrust the shovel into the ground an inch away from our hand.

We scooped backwards. While the old dear is mostly harmless, if you don't mind his jabber, he is a bit… easily distracted by birds, flowers, flashy black Fellbeasts etc. Better not to take your chances.

'Heard nothing of the _Mearas_ Mystery?' Gollms asked shrewdly. (Hmm, '_Mearas_ Mystery'… I might use that one myself.)

'Is there one?' Radagast inquired, to be forever removed from the List of Suspects.

'Sort of,' I mumbled, since Gollms was going all puffy and huffy and would only delay our departure.

'Oh, you youngsters. Always catching butterflies,' Radagast remarked, digging on.

(How do I know it was him? One, there was the Staff. Two, the Pointy Hat. Three, if in the middle of nowhere you meet someone with little more than a Hat and a Staff in the way of worldly belongings, installing a sign 'Beware – Manve's Eagles Cavorting Grounds!' – you meet Radagast, and no mistake.)

Gollms signaled me to wait, using an emergency neural path. I obeyed. Hard to ambulate using one leg and one arm.

'Need any help?'

'Really? Are you interested?'

The poor nut rejoiced at the prospect of free manpower.

'Yes, in bread and butter. We surely are.'

He looked behind us. Probably, one of them eagles whizzed by.

'There's nobody else here,' he said soothingly, as if reading our thoughts.

'Splendid,' Gollms grumbled. 'Now spill, old man; we shall audit.'

He hemmed and hawed, but finally we sat down and picnicked to our hearts' content. Some data, too, came to light, but first we had to listen to his sorrows, which were many.

He had (at last) learned of the mess which Gandalf &Co had left of Izengard and Helm's Deep and had a Talk with Ents which he had to cut short (small wonder there) 'cause they'd heard about a mysterious Sapling of the White Tree and wanted Equal Propagation Rights. It gets lonely after hundreds of long years in a cold world. Unfortunately, he could not help them, and, weary of travelling and fighting, they returned to the deeps of Fangorn.

Radagast then looked around him, saw blood-crusted ruins and sooty battlefields and went to the Golden Wood for another handful of dust. Typical wizard's logic.

He believed he'd inherited the whole of Middle-Earth to make ticking again, what with other Istari gone, Elves dwindling, Men self-absorbed and Orcs unenlightened. (He hardly ever thought of Dwarves, except in the tree-logging department.)

Naturally, he was wrong. The _real_ men of enterprise could not leave their land without proper guidance.

First Theoden came to his senses in the Houses of Healing. It was jolly decent of the old man to retire, even though he remains the uncrowned King of the Mark, since he'd bought the Races. Then Gollms and I woke up in our lair – though for a goodly while we steered clear of trouble. Alas, hot blood and all that – we had to get back into the thick of it. Then Saruman and Wormtongue paddled back: the one had the prudence to go to ground and the other – the gall to waltz back into the Golden Palace.

(And of course, there is always Gandalf – though we, by an unspoken agreement, did not speak about him. Just to be on the safe side.)

Radagast welcomed Saruman back into his soggy fortress, gave him a purpose in life – to clean the debris, re-plant the woods and re-sow the meadows, etc. – and went on his merry dusting way. I daresay he was much cheered by the news. Such a weight had been lifted off his scrawny shoulders!

'The _mearas_,' Gollms prodded. 'Heard anything about it lately?'

'Only that it won,' Radagast said simply.

'Repeatedly. And now they can't find him!'

'Sure, you can't find the winner,' said the wizard, and stretching he returned to his noble if not overly intellectual labor.

'Blast,' Gollms said in the privacy of our skull.

'Wait,' I said out loud. 'Who was Shadowfax's main opponent?'

It was something which we would be told immediately when we reached Theoden's stables – and yet I wanted the Wise One's take on it. Call me a fool; sometimes it pays to follow spontaneous urges: it makes the little cogs of mind to click into place –

'Time,' shrugged Radagast. 'It's always time, ain't it?'

So much for insight. We ran onwards through the gorse, careful to leave the sign behind and no fatal obstacle in front of us – that's how you use geography. In another day we reached the Mark.

It was as we remembered it – plain, green and full of Horse-riders who were plain, green and full of themselves. (Isn't it curious how elves crawl into every other word?) They let us pass; Gollms swore they muttered unpleasant things behind our back. It mattered little.

The women, though.

They were silent.

Rohan housewives have never been into betting. Still, with such a feministic role model they now prefer to say they are into _winning_, and everyone knows a _mearas_ is a capable competitor – a decided genius.

The Horse had challenged the whole kingdom. Many would lose if it weren't found. But the women were logical; therefore they would lose if it were.

And 'Scapegoat' doesn't look good on your C.V., trust me on that.


End file.
